Back to Gaspé after 13 years

This afternoon we landed at Gaspé. It is hard to believe, but the last time we spent a night here (at the other motel) was in 2005, on our way to visit Halifax. Not much has changed since then, although Jacques Cartier's memorial cross has been moved down, to the new waterside cultural interpretation area, and the cost of accommodation in the town has gone up. We are paying $149 for tonight's sleep at the Hotel Plante; admittedly, it is a palatially large room, a "suite" no less, with two desks, a bathtub, and a panoramic view of the wide, blue bay; this is because, when I made the booking from Mont Joli airport this morning, all the cheaper rooms had been taken.

We came to Gaspé today because our first choice of destination, Bonaventure, also had fully booked hotels. It is just as well. Had we flown there from Mont Joli, we would have encountered problems at altitude, because clouds were building over the Chic Choc mountains and those clouds would have put ice on the wings. The freezing level was as low as 5000 feet.

I was anticipating a turbulent flight all the way in the strong wind, but to my delight the only turbulence came in the final 20 minutes of our 1.7 hours of airtime, when we headed away from the coast direct to Gaspé airport over the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula. The rest of the way, following the spectacular coastline northeast from Mont-Joli, over Matane, Ste-Anne-des-Monts and beyond, was in fast flowing but smooth air above and below stretches of thin, white or pale grey stratus or white cumulostratus, with the Gulf of the St. Lawrence widening to our left, large ships on it, and the forested hills getting steeper and steeper and more and more covered with wind turbines, facing into the northwest wind, to our right. Some of these appeared to be glaciated valleys with silvery rivers winding through them.

On our descent, the winds became very gusty, reported as gusting to 22 knots at the surface, and at right-angles to our runway too, more or less. Chris seemed to rely on his experience, making the requisite adjustments on the rudder pedal automatically, so he tells me, when a particularly strong gust (or wind shear?) tipped us sideways at only about 100 ft from the ground. He corrected our angle of attack and did an excellent landing on the centre line, although the oleo juddered like mad as we rolled to a halt. Pulling onto the apron and climbing out near the fuel tanks we were asked to move PTN elsewhere quickly, because a Jazz plane, a Dash 8 turboprop, was about to land too and would need fuelling first, with passengers waiting to board. Chris observed its landing and saw that that one too was affected by the turbulence.

The views we had during our approach to Gaspé were worth any amount of fear (on my part): so beautiful were the cloud shadows on the hills, with such clarity and blueness of sky and water in the two bays.

I'd hoped to find a car rental at the airport. There were two rental desks but both were closed, so we had to wait half an hour for a taxi into town instead. To my delight the Café des Artistes near the two motels is still in business and is still well worth the visit, being packed full of quirky sculptures, hanging stained glass artworks, and with original paintings, by different artists, all over the walls. The café displays a menu des artistes as well as a food menu there. The waiters, waitresses and clientele, even, all seem to be romantically inclined people: typically being young, long haired, unconventionally dressed. The table tops are mosaics, featuring ducks. The wifi password is artistes.

I omitted to mention, above, that we had made the acquaintance of an interesting gentleman during breakfast at our Auberge in Ste.-Flavie, called Tim Cole, from British Columbia. He too flies a Cessna 172 (his was parked next to ours up the hill), but had also flown larger aircraft professionally, chairs the western branch of COPA and knows many famous members of the Canadian aviation community including Chris' friend Kathy Fox. Like all these people, he has a wealth of stories to tell.

For the rest of this afternoon we walked through the town, aka the Berceau du Canada, Birthplace of Canada (because of Jacques Cartier, the first French explorer of the New World, landing here and laying claim to the land in 1534), getting our bearings, finding the Musée de Gaspé on the hill, the boardwalk along the shore and by the river and the Information Centre across the bridge where the VIA-Rail station used to be situated, but was closed five years ago, due to an un-maintainable railway line. The new centre is an attractively modern, wood and glass building, with a birch-bark teepee inside---Do Not Touch---displaying a wolf and a beever pelt, reminding visitors of Gaspé's Micmac (Mi'kmaq) heritage. Tomorrow we might see some latter day Micmac people arriving by boat to put on a show at the docks, if I understood the lady at the information desk correctly. The marina is there too, only one yacht on the water this evening. The sky has become very clear during the last few hours. The sun sets 45 minutes earlier in Gaspé than in Ottawa, quite a noticeable difference!